Beyond Art Basel: A Guide for Wanderers

The Peak Tram to Victoria Peak offers a view of historic Hong Kong as it passes quiet, shady neighborhoods on a vertiginous track built in the late 1800s.CreditAnthony Collins/Getty Images

By Justin Bergman

March 22, 2017

As settings for art fairs go, there are few as wonderfully distracting as Hong Kong. No matter how many times I’ve been to the city, I’m always struck by the awesome views.

It seems I’m always climbing as high as I can to take it all in: riding the Peak Tram to the summit to see the light display of Hong Kong Island at night; hiking the Dragon’s Back ridge for a view of the secluded beaches and turquoise bays on the island’s quieter southern side; climbing to the top deck of Hong Kong’s iconic trams to watch the chaos of color as the city whizzes by below.

Down at street level, Hong Kong pulses with an energy that also feels unique. Getting lost is one of the joys of this city. One minute, you’ll be dodging a river of people to cross a busy thoroughfare canopied with neon signs; the next, you’ll be wandering through a “wet market” in a narrow back alley where vendors sell fish, shrimp, eels, and knobs of ginger twice the size of your hand.

The best way to soak it all in is on foot, starting with a wander through Central, Hong Kong’s glitziest shopping and eating district, just a short taxi or tram ride from the Art Basel fair at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center. Hollywood Road, which predates the more illustrious Hollywood in California and is believed to have been named after the holly trees once growing on either side, was traditionally the center of Hong Kong’s antiques trade, but these days is lined with some of the city’s best shops, bars and restaurants.

The homeware store Goods of Desire (48 Hollywood Road) has become a local institution thanks to its colorful, Hong Kong-inspired designs (tote bags featuring mah-jongg tiles and shower curtains decorated with the city’s charming old-fashioned mailboxes). Down the street, a 1950s complex for married police officers has been transformed into a marketplace for designers called PMQ (35 Aberdeen Street), where you can find, among other things, buffalo-horn sunglasses at the Belgian-owned boutique Smith & Norbu and handmade silver earrings in the shape of broccoli at 794729 Metalwork.

After browsing through the market, you may want a drink on the terrace at Aberdeen Street Social (35 Aberdeen Street), where the Pump Up the Jam cocktail (rum, berry jam, lemon juice, hibiscus tea and Tabasco) is $15, or 120 Hong Kong dollars. (All prices are in American dollars, with $1 equal to 7.75 Hong Kong dollars.)

As you head east, the neighborhoods get grungier, and restaurants and bars become trendier.

Hidden behind a red door in Sai Ying Pun, a former industrial neighborhood that’s been rapidly gentrifying, Ping Pong 129 (129 Second Street) draws a boisterous weekend crowd as much for its ambience (the bar is in a former table tennis club) as for its range of gins from Spain.

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Ping Pong 129, which is known for a boisterous weekend crowd and its range of gins from Spain.CreditFan Wu

Nearby, Potato Head Hong Kong (100 Third Street) became the latest high-profile opening in the neighborhood last year. The Sou Fujimoto-designed space contains an airy street-side cafe, I Love You So Coffee, and the gorgeous Indonesian restaurant Kaum, which takes a traditionalist approach to its cooking techniques (small plates from $9.70), as well as the décor, a kaleidoscope of bright textiles from Sumatra and hand-painted ceiling tiles from Sulawesi island.

Even if art is the main agenda for the weekend, you can enjoy the other great pleasure in Hong Kong: eating. One of my favorite perches is at the bar at Chachawan (206 Hollywood Road), where you can watch the chefs in the open kitchen prepare spicy specialties from the Isaan region of northeastern Thailand, like gai tort (half-chicken brined in fish sauce for a day, then deep-fried, $21.70) and larp bet (a spicy duck meat salad, $16.50).

Tucked away on a side street, Ronin(8 On Wo Lane) may be as hard to find as it is to book. There are only 14 seats at the bar for reservation, though 10 other seats are available for walk-ins. The Japanese izakaya-style menu focuses on inventive seafood dishes, like a black-Pilsner-battered tilefish with a black sugar Japanese mayonnaise ($21.90), as well as more than 100 Japanese whiskeys.

And when Art Basel wraps up, tack on a day for recovery on rugged Lantau Island, the antidote to the concrete-and-glass skyline. Hike a section of the 43-mile Lantau Trail (routes and maps can be found at hiking.gov.hk), or poke around Tai O village, one of the few fishing villages in Hong Kong, where locals still live in stilt houses and peddle dried fish and shrimp paste.

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Trawlers and boats at Tai O, one of the few fishing villages in Hong Kong.CreditCaroline Pang/Getty Images

Or take in more art. One of the most highly anticipated cultural developments in Hong Kong has finally started to open, the M+ visual arts museum in the West Kowloon Cultural District. While the main institution is still two years from completion, the smaller M+ Pavilion space opened last year for temporary exhibitions. (Suhanya Raffel, the executive director of M+, is scheduled to take part in one of the Art Basel conversations.) A bonus: the dramatic panorama of Victoria Harbour from the pavilion’s cantilevered, outdoor terrace.

The quintessential view of Hong Kong, however, is from Victoria Peak. The ride to the top aboard the Peak Tram ($11.35 round-trip, including access to Sky Terrace) also provides a glimpse of historic Hong Kong as the cars glide through quiet, shady neighborhoods on the vertiginous track built in the late 1800s.

Because the line to board can sometimes be long, I like to have dinner in the city first and then venture to the Peak just before it closes at midnight when the mainland Chinese tour groups are fast asleep in their hotels. And if you’re up for a stroll, an alternative way down the mountain is via Old Peak Road, a jungle-enshrouded path that used to be the way the early British colonists ascended the peak — carried in their sedan chairs, of course.

In Hong Kong, descending isn’t as much fun, but it’s at least easier on the legs.